Adhikari is seen in his Indian curry restaurant Satkar in Tokyo, May 11, 2026. (Mainichi/Hidenobu Fukuhara)
TOKYO — Posts protesting the Japanese government’s tighter requirements for the “business manager” residency status for foreign entrepreneurs are spreading on social media. The sharpest criticism is aimed at a rule change last October that raised the required capital from at least 5 million yen (approx. $31,400) to at least 30 million yen (about $188,300) to prevent fraudulent use of the status. The same requirement applies in principle not only to new applications but also to renewals.
“I planned to keep running my curry shop and living in Japan forever …” said Adhikari, a 47-year-old Nepali man who runs Satkar, an Indian restaurant with around 20 seats about an eight-minute walk from Tokyo Metro Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station in the capital’s Koto Ward, his voice sinking as he spoke.
Most of his customers are Japanese. Popular menu items include tomato-based chicken curry with spices and naan.
Adhikari moved to Japan in 2008. After working at another curry shop for about five years, he established a company in 2013 with 5 million yen in capital and opened his current restaurant, which he has run with family members and part-time workers. Until now, he has met visa requirements without problems, but he says clearing the new capital requirement will be difficult.
“Ingredient costs have gone up, and it’s hard to save that kind of money. I think people who abuse the visa system need to face stricter rules. But isn’t it wrong to make it harder for everyone across the board to renew their visas?” he claimed.
He said Indian and Nepali restaurants run by acquaintances from his hometown are facing similar worries.
To support restaurants like Adhikari’s, social media users have been posting criticism of the stricter rules using a hashtag that translates as “supporting my favorite ethnic restaurants forever.”
Taro Tsurugashima, center right in the yellow T-shirt, hands a petition regarding the capital requirement for foreign business owners to obtain or renew a business manager visa to an Immigration Services Agency representative in Tokyo, May 13, 2026. (Mainichi/Hidenobu Fukuhara)
The hashtag was started by writer Taro Tsurugashima, who lives in Tsurugashima, Saitama Prefecture. He said he was prompted to act after the owner of an Indian restaurant he knows told him, “At this rate, we won’t be able to keep the restaurant open.”
Tsurugashima is also leading an online petition titled, “Please stop the ’30-million-yen capital’ rule that is crushing curry shops.” While saying, “We do not oppose appropriate screening to prevent abuse of the system,” the petition calls for changes, arguing, “If authorities can simply confirm the actual state of each business, then cutting them off with a uniform 30-million-yen standard is far too tough.”
On May 13, he held a gathering in the House of Councillors and submitted more than 53,000 signatures to officials from the Immigration Services Agency of Japan (ISA). At the event, an Indian man said tearfully, “If they suddenly tell us to go home, what are we supposed to do? Please help us.”
Why did the government tighten the capital requirement for business manager residency status?
Behind the move is criticism that wealthy foreigners are setting up paper companies to fraudulently obtain residency. In a fact-finding survey, the ISA found cases in which registrations for small offices were concentrated in the same building and there was no one coming or going, leading it to determine that no real business existed.
An agency official said, “We will give a certain degree of consideration to companies that are operating stably. We make a comprehensive judgment based on their management situation and their efforts to meet the new standards.” But the official also said that, because decisions are made through individual screening, “it is difficult to present a clear, easy-to-understand hurdle” applicants must clear.
Many small shops still appear unable to shake their concerns.
According to a survey conducted by Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. in March and April among foreign business owners, 5% of the 299 companies that responded said they were considering closing down.
Atsushi Kondo, a professor at Meijo University who is familiar with the issue, noted that South Korea’s residency status system has two levels — about 30 million yen and 10 million yen (approx. $62,800) — separating trade, a key industry, from other businesses. He proposed that rather than uniformly raising the capital requirement to 30 million yen, authorities could set different standards based on actual business conditions, such as one standard for small restaurants and a higher one for real estate businesses that handle large amounts of capital.
(Japanese original by Hidenobu Fukuhara, Digital News Group)